Communication is central to any business, and while email is great for many tasks, sometimes you just need to talk to clients or other members of your team no matter where they are. Business telephone systems are, therefore, important for businesses from two employees to 2,000.
Modern business phone systems make use of Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, which offers much more versatility compared to traditional copper phone lines.
Using VoIP, companies can easily forward calls to any other landline or mobile phone number in the world, meaning that even when no-one is in the office, the calls can be automatically sent to an employee’s mobile without the caller knowing they aren’t in the office. And if there is no-one to answer the call, then with a VoIP system then there can be universal voicemail access.
The technology also offers the possibility of easily creating a conference call, so that staff can talk to both clients and other staff members with different expertise at the same time, making the call a more efficient use of time for all involved.
If a client has organised a call your company with a query, if it is possible too route the call to the right person immediately or to get all the relevant team members together onto the exchange to offer their input and solve the query right there – everyone goes away happier.
Due to VoIP phones being connected to the network, it is also possible to make sure that they share address books, so that everyone in the office has access to the same contacts, and no-one has to go searching to find the right up-to-date contact details for clients or partners.
VoIP calls can be encrypted, which means that in businesses where you are discussing privileged information and security is paramount, it will be much more difficult for others to listen in to the call and steal the information.
The biggest selling point of modern business VoIP phone systems, however, is that they can bring down costs and increase return on investment (ROI). Not only will unifying a phone system from multiple phone lines and phone numbers to a single service make the whole system simpler to manage, as the calls are being sent over the network, internal calls are free, and rates for calling elsewhere are generally much reduced and bundled into packages.
Photograph by Roland Tanglao